The current global infrastructure financing landscape is a striking showcase of contrasting realities. On the one hand, there’s a vast pool of global financing waiting to be harnessed, with an estimated $31 trillion in assets held by pension and sovereign wealth funds. On the other, there’s a projected $15 trillion gap between global infrastructure needs and spending through […]
From 1970 to 2021, the global urban population surged from 1.19 billion to 4.46 billion, while the Earth’s surface temperature rose by 1.19 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Cities, as engines of prosperity, have been major contributors to climate change. A new World Bank report, Thriving: Making Cities Green, Resilient, and Inclusive in a Changing Climate, suggests that […]
Social media platform TikTok said on Thursday it is in the early stages of exploring a chatbot called “Tako” that can converse with users about short videos and help them discover content, and is conducting tests with select users in the Philippines. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft Corp, last year launched chatbot ChatGPT, offering arguably the […]
Canada’s two biggest lenders, TD and Royal Bank of Canada, missed analysts’ estimates for quarterly earnings on Thursday as tough economic conditions spurred the banks to make higher provisions for borrowers falling behind on repayments. TD, which called off its $13-billion acquisition of U.S.-based First Horizon this month, said it does not expect to meet its medium-term […]
A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of U.S. critical infrastructure organizations, from telecommunications to transportation hubs, Western intelligence agencies and Microsoft said on Wednesday. The espionage has also targeted the U.S. island territory of Guam, home to strategically important American military bases, Microsoft said in a report, adding that “mitigating […]
Nikola Corp said on Thursday Nasdaq gave the electric truck maker a delisting notice for not meeting its minimum bid price requirements. Shares of the company were down 5% at 73 cents. They fell about 78% last year on high battery material costs and production concerns. Nikola has been trying to raise cash for operations by […]
Nvidia Corp soared about 25% on Thursday to near a market value of $1 trillion after its stellar forecast showed that Wall Street has yet to price in the game-changing potential of AI spending. The surge added to a more than two-fold rise in the stock this year and was set to increase the chip designer’s […]
The EU benefits greatly from its wide participation in international value chains. However, that integration is not exempt from strategic dependencies on products and inputs that are critical for Europe. This column examines the EU’s dependencies in traded goods using data from 5,400 products imported between 2017 and 2020. Foreign-dependent products span various sectors, including […]
Open banking involves giving third parties access to information that is otherwise captive in a bilateral relationship between a provider of financial services and its client. Yet, there are considerable limits to the diffusion of financial information and to the use of such information to enhance competition. This column argues that the scope and the […]
Inflation has increased sharply since the start of 2021 as the global economy grapples with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This column draws on a long tradition of research on input-output linkages to trace the proximate contributions of energy and import costs to the cost-of-living crisis in the UK. […]
